USA- Racial Conflict: Travels with the “Green Book”

Travels with the “Green Book”

A sign of the times in the era of Jim Crow. CBS NEWS

CBS News 13 January 2019

Watching Mary Wilson, feeling the love at New York’s glamorous Café Carlyle, it’s hard to imagine what she felt at the age of 19 when, as a newly-minted Supreme just out of high school, she went on her first-ever road tour with a regular who’s-who of Motown stars. Traveling by bus with Stevie Wonder, Mary Wells, The Temptations and others, Wilson was confronted by hate in the still-segregated South.

She recalled. “We were getting off the bus, and there were gunshots.”

“They were shooting at the bus?” asked correspondent Martha Teichner.

“Oh, yeah. We had several holes in the bus,” said Wilson. “You know, your parents had told you, ‘Be careful, da da dah dah dah.’ You knew about the segregation, but I mean, the gunshot sort of brought it right into your face and saying, you could be killed.